During a multi-party teleconference, it is desirable to provide an indication of the identity of the person who is currently speaking. This is easily managed when each participant has his or her own individual communication device. For example, the “caller ID” or similar identifier of the speaker's communication device can be used to provide an indication to other participants of the speaker's identity.
A problem arises when two or more people share an endpoint device, such as a speakerphone, as is commonly found in a conference room. In such a situation, audible information received from any of the participants using the shared device can at best provide an indication that the speaker is associated with the conference room device. However, there will be no indication of which individual in particular is providing input through that conference room device.
Proposed techniques for identifying the speaker in a conference room situation include “voice print” identification and visual determination of the speaker. For example, voice recognition and facial recognition can be applied. However, such solutions are expensive to implement, and typically have slow response times.